These are

as to the infant, in the deserts of Africa and America. sacrifices made to necessity; but it is not so easy to discover any palliation for the destruction of those human victims which have bled on the altars as acceptable offerings to the gods. From motives of religion or patriotism, from a belief that, by sacrifices of this kind, some national calamity might be averted, or some general blessing obtained, thousands of innocent children have fallen by the hands of their parents. Equally reprehensible, because equally preposterous and unnatural, are the reveries of those political madmen, who have deluded mankind into a belief of the wisdom of a law, according to which such children only as were born perfect ought to be reared, and of those speculative economists who would regulate the number of souls to be saved, by the number of acres in cultivation, and the productive quality of the soil. The Stagyrite is not the only philosopher who, scared at the idea of a redundant population, recommended the means of checking such a tendency. Îf the polished Greeks, indeed, could be persuaded to receive such barbarous practices, we need not be surprized to find their servile imitators, the Romans, adopting the same doctrines, and putting in prac tice the same inhuman measures, and thus legalizing, as it were, child-murder. Here, however, both Greeks and Romans had the humanity to stop; and to make the magistrate, instead of the unhappy parent, the executioner.

But the nation which, in modern times, has been the most severely reprobated for the practice of infanticide, is China. That the practice of exposing children (though not of eating them, as the Swedish naturalist was led to believe) does exist in that country, must be granted; but we are persuaded, at the same time, that the early Jesuits have, through interested motives, grossly exaggerated the extent of the practice. In the first place, they have carefully concealed from Europeans the important circumstance that Foundling Hospitals abound in China; and that such living children as are exposed in the streets, by indigent parents, are so placed, not under the supposition of their being carried to one common grave with the dead ones, as the missionaries have pretended, but with the conviction that they will be carefully picked up by the police officers; which is actually the case. Neither are there sufficient grounds for concluding that the deceased children, exposed in the streets, have previously been murdered by their parents. A funeral, in all the cities of China, is necessarily attended with considerable expense, as every corpse, by a municipal regulation, must be interred beyond a certain distance from the walls. The bodies of children of indigent parents, whether still-born or the victims of disease, are therefore placed in the streets, in order that they may be removed by the proper officers and buried at the public expense. Not

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Not one word of this is to be found in the voluminous communications of the missionaries. They make a considerable display of their own humanity, by their solicitude to attend at the fatal pit for the purpose of saving the souls of those innocents in whom the spark of life is not quite extinct; and some credit is certainly due to them for taking care also of many of the living children which, we believe, the officers of police make no difliculty in delivering over to them, although aware that it is for the purpose of their being educated in the principles of the Catholic religion. It is not, however, a very honourable part to swell out their catalogue of Neophytes, thus obtained, at the expense of the character of a whole nation. We are glad of every opportunity of endeavouring to exonerate the Chinese from so foul a blot, and, in justice to them, we deem it right to quote from the Remarks' of the editor of the book before us a passage on this subject,-not however that we attach much weight to the authority.

⚫ During a residence of several months in Canton, I never witnessed, or even heard of, a case of infanticide. Many thousands of the poorest classes live entirely on the water; among these it is that the instances are supposed to be most frequent. Their situation offers the greatest facilities, and their poverty the strongest inducements, and such instances would be oftenest seen by strangers. Yet I never saw one, and I have been much on the water about Canton, among the most thronged parts of the floating population; nor do I know of any other person having seen one, nor did 1, to the best of my recollection, ever hear of any well authenticated case, although, like me, every body has heard of the supposed frequency of the fact. I should not deem the evidence of a drowned child an exception, out of so many thousands crawling about such embarkations as float for miles above and below Canton, many children must doubtless be drowned accidentally; and I have heard a case related as a proof of exposure or of infanticide, that conveyed to my mind a contrary impression. It was of a child seen floating tied to a hollowed gourd. The appendage argued care, rather than neglect or criminality.'---p. 268.

It would seem then to be reserved for the Hindoos, who have been held up as the most mild and benevolent of mankind, without any avowed or apparent motive, either of religion, patriotism, or poverty, to organize a systematic murder, by their parents, of female infants. This practice, which is truly designated as the most barbarous that ever owed its existence either to the wickedness or weakness of human nature,' would with them appear to be exclusively reducible to a mere selfish principle, less the offspring of prejudice, than of pride and avarice. The first notice of this unuatural custom was communicated by Mr. Duncan, when resident at Benares, to the Governor-General in Council, in 1789, and published by Sir John Shore, in the fourth volume of the Asiatic Researches;

searches; where it is observed that, 'the general practice, as far as regards female infants, is fully substantiated with respect to a particular tribe on the frontiers of Juanpore, a district of the province of Benares, adjoining the country of Oude. A race of Hindoos, called Rajekoomars, reside here; and it was discovered, in 1789 only, that the custom of putting to death their female offspring, by causing their mothers to starve them, had long subsisted, and did actually then very generally prevail amongst them.' It was not attempted, it seems, to keep secret, or to deny, this abominable practice; all of them unequivocally admitted its existence, and the only reason they assigned for it was-the great expense of procuring suitable matches for their daughters, if they allowed them to grow up. It was also discovered that a similar custom prevailed, though in a less degree, among a smaller tribe of people, also within the province of Benares, called Rajebunsies. Mr. Duncan, however, by persuasion and perseverance, but more probably through the influence of the Company, prevailed on some of the chiefs of those tribes to sign a written engagement, by which they renounced in future, for themselves and their posterity, this horrid practice.

From a conversation which Mr. Duncan held with Captain Wilford of Benares, in which the latter informed him that, in some old Greek author in his possession, he had read of the same thing being a practice in his time in Kutch and Guzzerat, he was induced, on his return to Bombay in 1804, to desire Captain Seton, then resident at Kutch, to make every inquiry into so curious a subject. The answer of Captain Seton is as follows: The custom mentioned in Gajra Bye's relation is in force to this day; every female infant born in the Raja's family of a Rannee, or lawful wife, is immediately dropped into a hole dug in the earth and filled with milk, where it is drowned.' He states, moreover, that this practice was not peculiar to Kutch, but extended to the heads of the Rajput tribes of Guzzerat; that, of the Jarejahs, or collateral descendants of the Rajah's family, only two men of any note had brought up their daughters; and that the expense and difficulty of procuring suitable husbands, were the excuses usually made; but that the Rajah's pretext was, that he considered it beneath him to match his daughter with any man.

In a subsequent letter, he says, that the Jarejahs, to supply the place of those destroyed, purchase wives from another tribe called Soda; and such,' he observes, is the barbarous inveteracy of these women, that, when married to Mahommedans, they continue the same practice, against the inclination and religion of their husbands; destroying their own progeny without remorse, in view to the advantage of the tribe from which they are descended.'

The origin of this unnatural practice, as related by Sunderji Savaji, a man of credit and respectability, who had long been employed in the purchase of horses within the territories of Kutch and Kattywar, for the use of the British cavalry in India, is as follows:

"In former times it so happened that, to one of the head men of these Jarejahs several female children were born; and as, among the Hindus, it is incumbent to provide husbands for their daughters, whilst these latter are yet in their non-age, the Jarejah chieftain applied to the family Brahman, or priest, to pursue the necessary measures for getting the said Jarejah's female children contracted in marriage. The Brahman, after making every inquiry, and going about to every place in quest of suitable matches for these children, returned without effecting his object- wherefore,' said the Brahman, since to retain your female offspring in the family house, after their arriving at the age of womanhood, is contrary to the rules of religion, I will take them with me, and burn them in the fire; on condition, that it be stipulated on your part, to destroy, at their birth, all issue of the same sex, that shall hereafter be born in your family; laying, as I now do, my solemn malediction, both here and hereafter, on you and yours, if you fail to perform the same, in such manner, that if you shall preserve any of your future daughters, they shall pass their lives in penury and want; nor shall good attend the father or mother of such chil dren.'-p. 29.

Another account of the origin of this detestable custom is given by the Jarejahs.

A powerful Rajah of their caste, who had a daughter of singular beauty and accomplishments, desired his Raj-gur, or family Brahman, to affiance her to a prince of desert and rank equal to her own. The Raj-gur travelled over many countries, returned, and reported to the prince, that his mission had not proved successful. This intelligence gave the Rajah much affliction and concern, as the Hindoos reckon it to be the first duty of parents to provide suitable husbands for their daughters. In this dilemma the Rajah consulted his Raj-gur; and the Brahman advised him to avoid the censure and disgrace which would attend the princess remaining unmarried, by having recourse to the desperate expedient of putting her to death. The Rajah was long averse to this expedient, and remonstrated against the murder of a woman, which, enormous as it is represented in the Sastra, would be aggravated when committed on his own offspring. The Raj-gur at length removed his scruples, by consenting to load himself with the guilt, and to become, in his own person, responsible for all the consequences of the sin. Accordingly the princess was put to death; and female infanticide was, from that time, practised by the Jarejahs.'-p. 44.

Major Walker, however, seems to think it probable, from an account he received at Baroda, that it might have arisen from a refu

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sal of the Jarejahs to give their daughters in marriage to the invading Mahommedans :

The high-spirited Jarejahs would not brook the disgrace, and pretended they did not preserve their daughters; but, fearful of the consequences, and that force would be resorted to, in order to obtain what was refused to entreaty, they, in this extremity, listened to the advice of their Raj-gurs, and, deluded by the fictitious responsibility which they accepted, the practice of infanticide originated, and has since been confirmed.'-p. 106.

Whether the horrible expedient of getting rid of their female children originated in the Mahommedan conquest of Scind, or from the disappointment felt by the Rajah, in not finding a suitable match for his daughter, is of little or no consequence. The practice, it is very certain, is extensively established, and evidently resulted from the advice of the Brahmans: the thought of taking upon themselves the responsibility of the sin, was an admirable expedient to remove any compunctious visitings of nature' on the part of the parent. Whatever a Brahman inculcates is implicitly followed by the deluded multitude. The texts of the Vedas are altered, modelled and explained, to suit their own purposes; yet the Vedas are still considered to contain the unchangeable doctrines of Brahma. In short, both law and religion are precisely what their learned pundits chuse to make them. It is a well-known fact, that a governor general of Bengal prevailed on the Brahmans to declare the potatoe one of the edible roots enumerated in the Vedas, before which it had been considered as unholy and forbidden. Indeed, whenever the government of India has any point to carry which affects the people at large, it would be wise to bring over the Brahmans to its views; for such is the influence of this privileged order of men over the pliant Hindoos, that, could they, by proper management on our part, be prevailed upon to substitute the Old and New Testaments, for the Vedas and Puranas, it would be easy to persuade sixty millions of souls that Christianity is the true religion contained in their sacred books.

It is difficult to say which is the most extraordinary event, that of originating a practice so unnatural, as the murder of female children, against which all the tenets of the Hindoos are opposed, or the abrogation of an established custom, which conferred distinction, and gave character and renown to a caste. Neither the origin, nor the abolition, it is pretty evident, could be effected by force; the former might have been established by flattering their pride, encouraging their avarice, and adding to their convenience; whilst fear and selfinterest had a considerable share in effecting the latter. In the year 1805, when Major Walker was resident at the court of Gaikawar, an instruction was sent to him from Bombay, to effect the 0 4 abro